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Community Australia General Dutch Connections - a book from the Australian National Maritime Museum
Community Australia General Dutch Connections - a book from the Australian National Maritime Museum
| Dutch Connections - a book from the Australian National Maritime Museum |
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P&O Nedlloyd, the great Anglo-Dutch conglomerate widely expected to be the wonder of international shipping, lasted just eight years... until it fell victim of its own success. Forged in the union of two big European carriers - Nedlloyd Lines of the Netherlands and P&O Containers of the UK - PONL was floated as a public company in 2004 and promptly swallowed up by the giant AP Moller-Maersk company of Denmark just one year later. Mr Bob Kemp, Australian CEO of P&O Nedlloyd at the time of the take-over, analyses the breathlessly quick corporate disappearance in Dutch Connections - 400 years of Australian-Dutch maritime links 1606-2006, a new book just published by the Australian National Maritime Museum. The conglomerate, he says, languished for a few years, shackled to the long political and administrative traditions of its Dutch and UK partners. Then, in 2003, a new CEO produced new goals, new corporate identity, new energy and new levels of profit. An excited PONL floated, only to disappear. And with it went the last trace of the largest and best-known of the Dutch liner shipping companies, closing another era in the history of Netherlands shipping... and another Dutch maritime link with Australia. The new publication brings together 12 papers presented to an Australian National Maritime Museum symposium Dutch Connections - 400 years of Australian-Dutch maritime links1606-2006 held in Sydney and in Fremantle WA in May last year. The symposium was timed to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the landing of the Dutch East India Company ship Duyfken, under Captain Willem Janszoon, on the west coast of Cape York Peninsula - the first documented landing of Europeans on the Australian continent. Conference papers in the richly illustrated book span the four intervening centuries of surprisingly close maritime links between The Netherlands and Australia. They include: Encounters of the third kind - Dutch shipping in Asia and the search for the South Land - Dr Robert Parthesius, Amsterdam Historical Museum; Cultural heritage and a piece of pewter [Dirk Hartog's plate] - Professor Robert Sigmond, Rijksmuseum, The Netherlands; The Dutch on Australian shores, the Zuytdorp tragedy - Dr Michael McCarthy, Western Australian Museum. The symposium and the publication were produced with the assistance of the Shell Companies in Australia. Dutch Connections - 400 years of Australian-Dutch 1606-2006 maritime link, eds Lindsey Shaw, Dr Wendy Wilkins, Australian National Maritime Museum 2006. Soft cover in slip case, 175 pages, illustrated. RRP 39.95. Available from The Store, Australian National Maritime Museum, (02) 9298 3698. Only 1000 copies printed. Media inquiries Bill Richards, (02) 9298 3645; 0418 403 472
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